The VOX POPULI have decided that it’s time to start introducing some of the unsung heroes of the VOXVerse!
To start, we decided to sit down with Bolts McWhiffles in the newly created crafting room that is like a second home for her. This is a very capable squirrel, right at home in her trusty self-made robot contraption that helps her and has all sorts of tools and contraptions available on it to help her put things together. Bolts uses this machine as if it were an extension of herself.
She is the creator of almost every recipe that can be crafted in the VOX universe. The Leonardo da Nutci of the VOXverse. You know the creator of the Mona Peanut…
Vox Populi: Hey Bolts! Nice to meet you.
Bolts McWhiffles: Nice to be here.
VP: So where did you come from? How did a squirrel become the master of crafting with the VOX?
Bolts: Ah, my origins are as tangled as a squirrel’s nest! I was once a carefree baby nut collector, frolicking in the dappled sunlight. Then — bam! — I found myself all alone, like a hazelnut forgotten in the back of the pantry. Gala Girl, the kindest VOX you will ever meet, scooped me up and brought me to her workshop. And there it was—the magical moment when I discovered my true calling!
I started playing around with nuts and bolts and putting things together. I figured out I had a real gift for it. Far more than most of the VOX. After a time, I took over the workshop. I created these fancy 3d printing machines and have been teaching VOX on how to craft ever since.
In this real gameplay shot from development of Project Cerberus, we can see Bolts McWhiffles in action alongside VOX !
VP: But how did you become the VOX crafting guru?
Bolts: Well, I invented the Nut-o-Matic 3000 — a 3D printer that churns out widgets faster than a caffeinated chipmunk. And I taught the VOX how to wield those printing machines and little tools. They owe me a lifetime supply of hazelnuts, by the way.
VP: Is there a favorite thing you like to build?
Bolts: Anything that uses nuts of course! [McWhiffles chitters at her own joke] Seriously though, I like to build Idols. They have unique shapes; are a bit more complicated to build. The VOX have figured out how to use those idols to gain power, or to gain knowledge of more advanced items to create.
VP: Do you see anything new going on in the VOXVerse?
Bolts: Well, I have been helping the Vox Populi on creating even more recipes and items to build- and places to store them. I have been supplying specs for rooms, doors, windows and all sorts of exterior items to create to help the VOX create places to live. Its a big, exciting task.
Hot diggity dog! It’s time for Negan to make his appearance in our weekly direct Hero Card sales.
Negan is a force to be reckoned with. Negan’s past actions were distasteful, to say the least… but no one can dispute that his leadership and strength helped The Saviors survive and rise to prominence. Sound like somebody who could help grow your empire?
Sale Details
This sale takes place on Friday, August 9th at 7am PT. Negan Hero Cards will follow a tiered pricing structure based on the remaining supply, with Common Hero Cards staying at one low price throughout the sale.
This sale is not time limited, and Negan will stay available in The Walking Dead: Empires Store until the supply is exhausted or it is taken down to make room for new Heroes in the future.
Like our other direct Hero Card sales, Negans purchased in this sale will fulfill directly to GalaChain and be usable in the game right away!
Survival at Any Cost
The new event cycle for August has begun. Are you ready for this weekend’s Walker Wipeout? Have you scavenged enough this week to climb the leaderboard?
Negan will arrive for direct purchase very soon. Will you add him to your empire? Lucille is thirsty, and Negan is ready to put her to work building your empire.
It’s that time again… the Spider Tanks Showcase has returned. This time we’re locked and loaded and are ready to unleash the proper fury of the Railgun!
Welcome back Pilots! This week we’re breaking down one of the most deadly weapons ever conceived by humanity. These mighty projectiles can bring a Tank down in one hit if fully charged and their destructive power is unmatched throughout the Earthen Cluster.
That’s right, today is all about the Railgun! The Railgun is a powerful long-range weapon powered by fusion-generated electromagnets. The immense momentum of these large projectiles can pierce the armor of any Tank, even dealing fatal blows to mint condition middleweights when fully charged.
The longer the Railgun is charged, the more damage it does. Unfortunately, you’ll be slowed down to a crawl while charging your electromagnets for firing… it takes a lot of energy to launch this heavy duty ordinance! A good Railgun Pilot has to know how long to charge, how to stay safe while charging, and above all else, how to make sure their superpowered hits land on enemy tanks.
Unleash the Power
When using a Railgun in the arena, positioning is more important than with most weapons. You need to make sure that you’re not going to be under threat while firing, but also that you have a clear shot on your opponents.
A clear shot isn’t just about range… often it’s just as much about angle. How you approach the enemy matters. If your vantage point effectively only has a small window to attack, your slow shots may not land a blow before the enemy escapes.
The slow travel of your projectiles is absolutely key to understand if you’re going to play Railgun. Many inexperienced Pilots will try to lead their quarries as they would with a Cannon or Crossbow. These projectiles move at nearly double the speed of a Railgun though… you’ll need to lead your target further or get closer.
Experiment with different charge levels on your shots. If you take 95% of your opponent’s health in one shot, that still means you’ll have to hit them with another shot to finish them off – no different than 50/50 on two shots. Sometimes this means you need to wind all the way up and try to finish them in one. Often it means that you’re going to have to go in close for a little double tap to finish them off. Plan ahead for these moments. Your goal isn’t to injure tanks… it’s to destroy them!
Plan ahead for that double tap and not even big tanks will be able to defend against you.
Run From the Rail!
It may seem easy to dodge Railgun shots since they move so slowly, but up against a good operator the Railgun can be very difficult to evade.
The Railgun is an extremely wide projectile. Its impact radius is much bigger than other weapons. While you can just barely juke to the side with a Cannon or Triple Threat, you’ll need to fully get out of the way or that rail will smash you.
While a Railgun is charging, you can see how much charge it has above the enemy tank. Wait until they fire before approaching them… it will take a moment for them to charge up another shot. Be wary of a railgun that’s fully charged and waiting. A patient Railgun is a deadly Railgun.
Try to hit them from range when possible and come in close only when they’ve just fired a shot. Avoid moving directly towards a charged rail… if you have no angular momentum you’re only making it easier for them to lead you. Zigzagging and spin moves are encouraged here. You want them to waste that shot.
Don’t walk right into the Railgun’s line of fire. You may as well just hand them a giftwrapped kill.
If you are heavily damaged by a Railgun, disengage immediately and go heal if possible. It may take them a while to charge up their shot, but they don’t need to fully charge if you’re already damaged. A clever Railgun Pilot will find a way to get in close for that quick kill or have the second shot on the way by the time you get hit with the first. If you’re low on health, they can hit you with their lowest charge level and still bring you down.
Last, if you’re playing in a heavy tank, don’t be afraid to get hit by a rail. If your tank is bigger than a Jet/Hurricane, chances are that a Railgun will have to hit you twice to bring you down. It takes a while to hit you twice. Use that to your advantage.
Railgun Tactics
A Railgun isn’t just a massively destructive Weapon – it’s also a powerful deterrent. A fully charged Railgun tucked around a corner is something even the bravest of Pilots won’t readily walk straight into. You may only fire ~15-20 shots in a regular match while playing a Railgun, but all those times that you’re charged and waiting to fire are also affecting your enemies and helping your team.
Use your Railgun to cement your team’s zone of control. Even if you don’t hit anyone, firing a Rail through the choke point on a map or a command point sends a clear message to your opponents about what is waiting for them.
On a fast body your Railgun’s zone of control can massively expand – once you master the sprint, shot, sprint, shot timing.
Railgun is a long-ranged powerhouse, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not useful up close too. When you’re point blank on the enemy, you remove the difficulty of hitting tanks with the slow-moving projectiles. You basically turn your tactical long-range warhead into a superpowered grenade. If you can penetrate back into enemy territory, you can absolutely wipe them out with just a few shots. Sometimes kamikazee tank is a good play.
BOOOOOOOM
A Railgun is terrifying when it 1-shots members of your team around you left and right. This is part of its power. While it may take some learning to be super effective with this weapon, you’ll be terrifying from the start! A weapon capable of bringing down a whole team in three shots makes your opponents question their strategy, giving you a chance to scoop up a win!
It may take some practice to get really great with a Railgun… but it’s worth it if you want to strike fear (and explosions) into your opponents!
That’s all from us today, but we’ll be back next week with yet another Spider Tanks Showcase!
It wasn’t very long ago that we released the GalaChain SDK. Honestly, it wasn’t all that long ago that we were just getting started with big dreams and a long road ahead.
Gala grew fast… and so did GalaChain. This quaint little neighborhood is getting more bustling by the day so we thought it’d be a great time to make a quick little reference guide for everyone.
Sites that are not owned and/or controlled by Gala are indicated with *
We’ll try our best to keep this updated regularly for now. If we’ve missed something, let us know on Discord!
A new battle begins… will this conflict lead you to glory or ruin?
Really that’s up to you. In this war, so much depends on how good of a start you get. While we’re all anxiously awaiting Elysium to open back up to Captains, let’s take a look at some of the best ways to get a great start when the servers open back up for Season 7!
The first week of a season is the absolute best time to get involved in Eternal Paradox and the fight for the ring. Eyeing that 900k+ pile of $ETIME that just got distributed to players at the end Season 6? The battle for the next set of rewards starts today!
Eternal Paradox is a team game. While you could play a whole season solo if you really wanted to, there are some things that you just can’t do on your own.
Conquest, Followers of Doom (pictured above), Guild Festival, Guild Arena… there are tons of activities in Eternal Paradox that are only for guilds… don’t be shy. Join a guild!
The sooner you get into a guild in a season the better. Every support that your guild provides decreases building or research time by 2% of the remaining total. That adds up! Even before 20+ guild member supports are possible with guild research, a -20% time to your buildings can make a HUGE difference when you’re starting out.
Guilds don’t just help you grow though. This is a war game, and there are Captains out there who want to take your stuff. Having a guild tag by your name will make them think twice about whether they want to start something that may be costly on both sides. Your guild mates can also stand by you and help defend when you need it.
While you’re clicking like mad in the first hours to get a solid foundation, don’t forget about rallies. Rallying with your guild to strike some early blows on the Black Sun Cult could give you a big advantage with extra experience and those huge “First Kill” bonuses. Get out there and get some loot from those cultists… the guild that fights together wins together.
Even at low levels a first kill can provide a high amount of resources.
First Order of Business
The tutorial prompts will walk you through the very first things you need to do to get started, but don’t stop there. You need to keep those timers ticking in the early days as much as possible. Don’t worry, once your timers on building, training and research get longer there will be time to slow down and take a breath.
Buildings
Keep that HQ going up in the first days. All your buildings are gated behind that, so make sure you leave yourself room to grow. Prioritize the Academy and one barracks early on… keep all your troops training, but push one barracks higher than the others to get you a concentrated power element to work with.
Note that the Harvester and resource gathering buildings give most of their increased resources at levels 6, 11, 16, 21 and 26. While it can be good to push up your Harvester early on for some extra resources, don’t get lost halfway between 6 and 11! The levels in between provide very little increased production, so consider them a stepping stone to level 6 or level 11.
Research
There are a lot of options to start with on research, but command and resources should be early focuses. Resource research makes all your fortress upgrades more affordable, therefore it’s less beneficial the later in the season you get it completed.
Command increases a wide array of factors, but most importantly it can help reduce your research and building time. Even a 3% decrease in building time can end up meaning hundreds of hours of construction saved over the course of a season… definitely worth prioritizing early on.
Try to save research into Mercenary and Soldier for day two and beyond. These are incredibly powerful boosts, but they won’t do much for you on the first day compared to getting command and resource head starts.
Soldiers
Like we said above, concentrate on one barracks first. That doesn’t mean you’ll neglect the others though… keep those timers running! Choose one to tier up faster than the others but keep every barracks training, even if it’s only training level 1s.
As your army gets to be more formidable and you start advancing a second group of soldiers, don’t be afraid to tier up rather than train. Tiering up a bunch of tier 2s to tier 3 soldiers saves you a massive amount of time in training. Don’t think of your low tier soldiers as waste or fodder… think of them as high tier soldiers who just haven’t finished their training yet!
Later on, you’ll inevitably be creating T1s to keep your high tier soldiers alive. This can wait for now. Don’t bother including T1s in your attacks to protect T3 or T4 soldiers. At this point in the season, your troop numbers are just too small to spare the power. Some of your highest tier soldiers will die along the way, but they’ll be replaced one hundred fold or more by the time first Conquest rolls around… there’s still time to build up your army!
Mercenaries
Choose a group of hunting mercenaries and work on them first. You want hunting synergy here with the barracks that you’ve decided to push upwards first. If that’s your fire barracks, choose four fire Mercenaries. If it’s tempest, choose storm Mercs… you get it.
These will likely be your primary hunting mercenaries for a few weeks if not the whole season, so choose wisely. If you can’t make a whole team with hunting synergy, consider getting creative. Zoe increases the synergy her troop can have in a battle, for instance. Bianca has a command skill that provides an extra flat bonus that can be used to make up for some missing synergy.
Don’t worry about your light and dark Mercenaries yet. It’ll be a while before you unlock barracks for those soldiers, so their war synergy does nothing for you at the start.
Other Tips and Best Practices
Use Up Your Stamina!
During the early days of a season you won’t have a very high maximum stamina. Don’t forget to use it frequently to hunt and do challenge stages. Running yourself dry on stamina is fine… missing out on a few hundred stamina because you were capped out could make you lose ground relative to other Captains.
You have to work your way up to higher level monsters, so make sure you keep pushing yourself and challenging the next tier.
Don’t push too hard though and lose all your soldiers early!
Don’t Forget About Shakram!
Shakram Legions are easy to overlook early on. You’re not getting a ton of use from T1 and T2 captives, and you don’t get experience from them.
They can, however, be your best source of resources in the beginning. Especially with the ‘First Kill’ bonuses, you can get set up with the supplies you need to never stop building if you keep putting pressure on the legion. You don’t need to push up too high, even low level Shakram legions provide a big boost to resources.
Explore!
Exploration points can be commonly neglected early on. You don’t need a bunch of Awakening Stones in the early game, but there’s more than just those in there! Jackpot chests can contain big bonuses like stamina, itemized resources or speedups. Even without jackpot chests, you’ll find speedups and XP potions in the ruins… no reason to waste those points by letting them cap out!
Don’t Be Shy… Get Out There and FIGHT!
Again, Eternal Paradox is a war game. Other Captains have stuff you want – maybe you just go take it?
PK points are probably the easiest thing to just ignore in the early game, but Captains who take a little while to scout out some opponents and launch an attack or two will be set up for success. More resources for you, less resources for the opponent… what’s not to love?
Good Fortune in the Battle!
Season 7 will launch at 5pm PT today, September 24th.
Are you ready for the coming battle? Get out there and fight for the future of Elysium!
